Losing faith in DRK

BelStar

BelStar

Member
I believe now is a critical time to look back at the past months and carefully consider options for the future of Darkcoin. While there still is a core group of people living in the "Cult of Evan" I am starting to think that DRK is in trouble. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

The initial hype is gone and the next step should be real-world adoption. While DRK has been a flagship and an incubator of the most creative ideas in crypto over the past months the implementation is severely lacking. In the current context it is hard to imagine it will ever really "work" and not be some kind of gimmick.

Based on information found on this forum, on the official DRK Jira, and on the IRC channel, I have considered several critical points that got me doubting the future of DRK:

  • Technical solution: RC2 and RC3 where evident failures due to hard forks. RC4 is also a failure but a more discrete one as there was no hard fork. It was the release that could not fail... This said it is far from the "great success" that blinded supporters are promoting. A reflection of this is that the communication campaign mentioned by Eltito has never taken place (https://darkcointalk.org/threads/status-update-7-1-2014.1675/)
    As we move into RC4, we will engage in a significantly more organized campaign to disseminate information than we have with any previous RC launch.
    Click to expand...
    Even with a reduced scope (no enforcement) and a rushed, insufficiently tested release (no masternode voting consensus tests, no rollback/go-live tests), here are some troublesome facts:
    • Darksend is still not working correctly; it was a catastrophe after the RC4 release to mainnet and it is now working adequately under specific conditions but this is still insufficient for real-world use by lambda users. Only hardcore users dare to denominate their coins on mainnet. See examples at https://darkcointalk.org/threads/rc4-issues-bugs-feature-requests.2039/page-13#post-18249 and http://www.reddit.com/r/DRKCoin/comments/2f01r2/issues_with_the_lastest_version/
    • The core of the solution (masternodes and payment of masternodes) is under heavy fire by no one else than Evan and flare. The payment system was considered flawed in RC3, hence the rework in RC4. One of the most fundamental components of DRK is still not stable... On Jira, Evan now candidly posts at http://jira.darkcoin.qa/browse/DRK-24?jql= :
      It turns out the masternode voting system is over complicated and somewhat risky to the network, so I've removed it and am using the RC3 masternode payment system. This means we won't have enforcement, but it fixes all of these issues and removes the risk to the network.
      Click to expand...
      On top of that, flare, who is one of the few to have seen the code, considers the RC3 payment system not viable (https://darkcointalk.org/threads/rc4-issues-bugs-feature-requests.2039/page-13#post-18236):
      As for me, i am still searching for a new approach to make the payments more network intrinsic - MNs should actually mine their coins by proof of service, not rely on good acting miners to share their mined coins. If we can somehow create a model where miners (PoW) and masternodes (PoSVC) mine independently from each other, we will even have a solution for further payments for "DarkTor" relays and exit nodes. The current approach (divide PoW reward) seems not flexible enough to achieve this.
      Click to expand...
    • No enforcement: enforcement of masternode payment was already promised in RC3 but quickly put aside due to hard fork risks. The spork alternative has been interesting but let's not fool ourselves, most masternode owners have been waiting for the possibility to enforce masternode payments for a long time, like vertoe. Most of us have the feeling that leaving things to the pools' generosity is a doubtful strategy. See http://jira.darkcoin.qa/browse/DRK-19?jql= and https://darkcointalk.org/threads/rc4-issues-bugs-feature-requests.2039/page-13#post-18199. Additionally, when asked what would be done about pools that decide not to pay masternodes Evan answered (https://darkcointalk.org/threads/closed-rc4-testing.1830/page-78#post-15352):
      They'll update or we'll kick them off the network.
      Click to expand...
      I wonder how he is going to achieve that now.
    • For the first time, users are actually losing DRK due to corrupt wallets that even Evan is unable to salvage while the root cause remains unknown. See http://jira.darkcoin.qa/browse/DRK-27?jql= where Evan states:
      Sorry, but this wallet is not recoverable. At some point during the darksend process, it looks like it was overwritten with invalid data and corrupted. It's missing transactions that happened, including you that contain the 571 darkcoin that are missing.

      The debug information you sent was useful but it didn't contain the transactions in question (it doesn't go back far enough). So I wasn't able to tell what the root cause was.
      Click to expand...
    • Useability issues: the wallet redesign that could have improved the user experience and was initiated by DRKLord has been on hold for several days or weeks. Initially, supporters were hoping to see this redesign coincide with the RC4 release; it is now unclear whether it would even be considered for RC5. It is not mentioned by Evan in his August 19 development update. See https://darkcointalk.org/threads/development-update-august-19-2014.2086/ and https://darkcointalk.org/threads/enhanced-darkcoin-wallet-ui.1705/
This list is not exhaustive but this post is already getting too long...

Taking all the above-mentioned points that I have tried to describe as objectively as possible in the interest of Darkcoin, are we really ready to opensource RC5 and expose these blatant weaknesses? Are we really intending to kill DRK?
 
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Well observed and well researched. I couldnt agree more.

It mainly breaks down that the development team in no way listens to the community and this is really poor. And where is our community lead anyways? Even for me it's hard to follow what's going on behind the scenes.
 
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Yes it does look like Eltito is not active anymore. DrkLord dissapeared. And Chaositec? What is he actually working on? It doesn't feel like they are official developers.
 
I agree that there are some issues, but I think most are solvable. The only one that I see no solution is the guy losing his darkcoins. That is really bad.

The dev team has to learn to work together and that takes time. Most of the additions are relatively new, so it is normal that it takes some time for them to catch up with eduffield. Also, Evan is in this full time, but I believe none of the others are (maybe InternetApe is, I'm not sure), so they can't put as much time as he does. CHAOSiTEC doesn't engage much here because he works in a boat for 15 straight days every month. In a recent thread he started about his Mintpal account being hacked and him losing his darkcoins, he commented that the stuff he does was not visible to most people (someone was suggesting that he asked for donations but he didn't think nobody would donate). darklord also posted a thread about being robbed by a friend while being at the hospital for a few days, so I guess he's been dealing with a few personal issues recently.

Regarding enforcement, Evan did a post at bitcointalk explaining his comment in Jira and said that we would have something at RC5. That going back to the RC3 system was only a temp, and far from ideal, solution.

eltito is not missing, he posts here sometimes and he is quite active at bitcointalk lately (I agree that we should try to post more here and less there, but that's another discussion). I also know that he reads a lot even when he doesn't post. And I believe he is in constant contact with the devs.

I think the communication campaign he talked about has not been done because, as you point, the launch of RC4 was not as expected. There were several versions in a few days. Then came cryptocrash. And it is August. I haven't seen or been part in any official discussion about communications, but there have been many comments by many in the community saying that we should wait to RC5 to push hard for adoption (btw, I don't agree, I think the sooner, the better, but it has to be done one by one, I don't believe we can launch huge things for this). I think this has been something slow that has been decided almost automatically and by nobody in particular.

Anyway, I think it is great that you post your concerns and that we all discuss them here. Just putting that post together shows that you care. Please, don't understand my comments are a denial of the problems, I'm just trying to add what I know to what you have researched :)
 
Thanks for your reply, fernando.

fernando said:
I agree that there are some issues, but I think most are solvable.
Click to expand...

That's how I would have felt a couple of releases ago. However, we are systematically confronted to structural failures and the need to go back to the drawing board to redesign core functionality instead of building further. Hence why I'm losing faith.
 
BelStar said:
Thanks for your reply, fernando.



That's how I would have felt a couple of releases ago. However, we are systematically confronted to structural failures and the need to go back to the drawing board to redesign core functionality instead of building further. Hence why I'm losing faith.
Click to expand...

I'm not a developer myself, but I recently cofounded a tiny gaming company and I see that same pattern. I think that is something intrinsic to the process of development. It can be mitigated, but we should also manage expectations. The environment of cryptos doesn't help with that... you are dead if you don't announce new things constantly!
 
fernando said:
I'm not a developer myself, but I recently cofounded a tiny gaming company and I see that same pattern. I think that is something intrinsic to the process of development. It can be mitigated, but we should also manage expectations. The environment of cryptos doesn't help with that... you are dead if you don't announce new things constantly!
Click to expand...

This is indeed that the case, people feel that if no new feature is announced (basically coin is not being hyped) then it means the coin is dead. I feel this is
absolute bullshit, BelStar you have to realise this is still a beta product, these are beta releases.

We can start promoting (hyping or whatever you wanna call it) the coin once we are out of beta (which in my opinion will be next year and a half still)

Have you seen any other project from near zero to a fully featured completed in 6 months? I haven't. Again I don't dismiss your post at all.
 
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Scriptiee said:
This is indeed that the case, people feel that if no new feature is announced (basically coin is not being hyped) then it means the coin is dead. I feel this is
absolute bullshit, BelStar you have to realise this is still a beta product, these are beta releases.

We can start promoting (hyping or whatever you wanna call it) the coin once we are out of beta (which in my opinion will be next year and a half still)

Have you seen any other project from near zero to a fully featured completed in 6 months? I haven't. Again I don't dismiss your post at all.
Click to expand...

As discussed on IRC, I could rephrase my concern into : "Where will DRK stand in another 6 months?" Based on past performance, I doubt we will have a functional solution by then if nothing changes.
 
The great thing is that nobody forces you to use darksend.
To this day I never used darksend, because of obvious errors, I just slowly accumulate darkcoin, and use it as a normal wallet. Not anonymized.

That's the great thing, and the reason why I have no problem being patient.
Because my darkcoins remain safe, and I decide myself if I want to use darksend or not.
At the moment darksend provides more or less functional anonymity, but one day I want it to work flawlessly and provide highly reliable anonymity. We are not there yet.

I like that, it's like we can buy darkcoin shares while the true darkcoin breakthru is being worked on.
It will happen! Not in the next weeks, maybe not even in the next 6 months.
But who said this has to be finished soon?
Maybe projects like darkcoin need to be developped "forever"? Getting better and better? Isn't this real evolution? Much like evolution has no goal, it just keeps on adapting?
 
georgem said:
The great thing is that nobody forces you to use darksend.
To this day I never used darksend, because of obvious errors, I just slowly accumulate darkcoin, and use it as a normal wallet. Not anonymized.

That's the great thing, and the reason why I have no problem being patient.
Because my darkcoins remain safe, and I decide myself if I want to use darksend or not.
Click to expand...

Are you saying you are not using Darksend+ because it is not working as it should and you are afraid of loosing your coins?
How are we supposed to start promoting and adoption if we don't use this feature ourselves?
 
jpr said:
Are you saying you are not using Darksend+ because it is not working as it should and you are afraid of loosing your coins?
How are we supposed to start promoting and adoption if we don't use this feature ourselves?
Click to expand...

I will always promote darkcoin as a coin that gives you the possibility to anonymize your coins if you want to.
The way I understand it, darkcoin allows you to use anonymity... it doesn't force you to use it. (and hopefully never will)

Also, when I explain darkcoin to people, I always explain to them that anonymity is a process, that such a thing like 100% anonymity can't be achieved in reality.
It's like length or strength, it can grow and grow, but it can't reach a point of "absolute length" or "absolute strength" because that would be silly.

So I explain to people that we have a very promising constantly developped thing called darkcoin that strives to become nr.1 in anonymity. Meanwhile they can always use darkcoin like a normal altcoin.

Darkcoin is like two coins in one, I tell them. This is unique and should be more emphasized in future promotions.
 
georgem said:
I will always promote darkcoin as a coin that gives you the possibility to anonymize your coins if you want to.
The way I understand it, darkcoin allows you to use anonymity... it doesn't force you to use it. (and hopefully never will)

Also, when I explain darkcoin to people, I always explain to them that anonymity is a process, that such a thing like 100% anonymity can't be achieved in reality.
It's like length or strength, it can grow and grow, but it can't reach a point of "absolute length" or "absolute strength" because that would be silly.

So I explain to people that we have a very promising constantly developped thing called darkcoin that strives to become nr.1 in anonymity. Meanwhile they can always use darkcoin like a normal altcoin.

Darkcoin is like two coins in one, I tell them. This is unique and should be more emphasized in future promotions.
Click to expand...

Yes. But you said you are not using darksend "because of obvious errors" and that "my darkcoins remain safe, and I decide myself if I want to use darksend or not." which made me thinking the DS+ is not safe to use/not working properly.
 
jpr said:
Yes. But you said you are not using darksend "because of obvious errors" and that "my darkcoins remain safe, and I decide myself if I want to use darksend or not." which made me thinking the DS+ is not safe to use/not working properly.
Click to expand...

I have used DS, it's not working perfectly, YET. But it works. I asked someone to trace a tx, it could not be traced. It seems to me that many people in the open sore community are afraid to use DS because it's not "open-sourced", or whatever reason.
 
jpr said:
Yes. But you said you are not using darksend "because of obvious errors" and that "my darkcoins remain safe, and I decide myself if I want to use darksend or not." which made me thinking the DS+ is not safe to use/not working properly.
Click to expand...
Well, most people (including kristov atlas) did succesfully use darksend... others (like camosoul) had a few problems with it... so that's what tells me to not use darksend yet. Unless I had to do an anonymous small payment, then I would use it. At the moment I am waiting and watching what other people say.
You can now successfully use darksend. But there are potential problems, meaning it's still in beta.
 
georgem said:
The great thing is that nobody forces you to use darksend.
To this day I never used darksend, because of obvious errors, I just slowly accumulate darkcoin, and use it as a normal wallet. Not anonymized.
Click to expand...

To achieve this, we could have stayed with RC4 on testnet longer to make sure things were working properly instead of going to mainnet with immature software. There was no hurry to go live. Now things are different as there is buggy software on mainnet and the need to fix things quickly (or quicker).
 
BelStar said:
To achieve this, we could have stayed with RC4 on testnet longer to make sure things were working properly instead of going to mainnet with immature software. There was no hurry to go live. Now things are different as there is buggy software on mainnet and the need to fix things quickly (or quicker).
Click to expand...
Yes, I agree. F**king daytraders demanding to see more update faster and faster.

Evan should completely refrain from making deadline announcements for future releases, that's not how a developer works.
Sure, I create software too, and my customers give me deadlines, but we exactly agree upfront what I am supposed to create, and what the endresult should look like.
Since darkcoin doesn't work this way, we should refrain from deadlines alltogether, and keep on solving the next problem until it is "mathematically" solved.

Also, enough with this RC bullshit.... we already have version numbers, we don't need fancy RC marketing.
 
BelStar said:
To achieve this, we could have stayed with RC4 on testnet longer to make sure things were working properly instead of going to mainnet with immature software. There was no hurry to go live. Now things are different as there is buggy software on mainnet and the need to fix things quickly (or quicker).
Click to expand...

BelStar, let's be fair to Evan. Yes we wished he had stayed on testnet a few more days, but Evan knows best when to go on main net. I see two things: deadline (he had promised to release RC4 early August), and Testnet is just a testnet, many real problems can only be found on main net. You already criticized him for his delay in your first post "This has concretely translated into consecutive missed deadlines and botched releases to mainnet".... So there was no hurry to go live but missing a deadline is unacceptable? ok. I agree with george that Evan should not have deadlines anymore.. Let's see if there won't be fudders on bct talking about that. :p
 
BelStar that was one of the nicest written posts I've ever seen. Really great formatting; well done!

All your points are valid. At the moment, it seems that a lot of the developers are MIA but I don't believe that to be the case.

The Developers
InternetApe has not been seen in what seems like months. CHAOSiTEC has a very odd work schedule and usually works on the project in the background. If you ever go on IRC, you'll usually see him working on something there. DRKLord, I have no idea. flare is super active and always seems to be working on something. It was his idea to set up Jira and has been actively developing since eduffield announced him as a developer. Lastly eduffield himself, that man is in the process of creating a foundation, helping users resolve errors and issues, keeping everyone informed of current progress, receiving feedback on code bugs from various sources who have been made privy to the code, and developing now a system to rival TOR. To say he's spread thin would be an understatement.

Community Lead
eltito is one man. It's extremely difficult to update everyone 24/7. Once again, he does more in the background than most people realize.

The Currency Itself
The Darkcoin project has been around for only eight months. In this time frame, a functional anonymity system has been made as well as a full node system that rewards operators. An actual problem of Bitcoin's network is the lack of an incentive to run a full node. Darkcoin's node count will undoubtedly rival Bitcoin's in the future.

Open Source
Once the project is released the fireworks will happen. Every single person on this planet will be able to read and understand the code. With that, they can improve upon it and help solidify Darkcoin's position as a truly trustless anonymous coin. With the movement to opensource, the developer count will increase tremendously. As long as the code is on Github anyone will be able to create commits with improvements and advances. Open source is the final major milestone for the currency; fireworks.

Darkcoin TOR/I2P Network
This is the only qualm I have with the currency. If this service is made, in my opinion, it should only be created after opensource and final stable release of the currency itself. Trying to do both at once seems like the saying "biting off more than they can chew". I also believe it should be a separate module itself that works alongside the wallet but that's not important for this discussion.

The Background
How did everyone find out about the creation of the Darkcoin foundation? Through a mandatory newspaper article. This is just one example of the many things that happen without everyone's involvement. As much as it sucks, not everything is shared. There are just too many moving parts. What is important and should be noted is that there is actual stuff happening. No one has stopped or quit. Progress is still being made.

Summary
You've highlighted the technical challenges of creating a multimillion anonymous online payment system. If it went so smoothly up to this point I'd be worried. There some areas where improvement is needed like an open discussion for proposed features. All in all though, if you are not focusing on the price of one coin alone, this project is moving swimmingly.
 
About DrkLord, in one of his posts DrkLord said he had to rush to the emergency due to some illness, I hope he's okay. We are lucky to have flare on the dev team, he's such a humble guy working relentlessly and quietly to help with the project. And we are also very lucky to have Propulsion, elbereth, vertoe, yidakee, and many others that have been helping/working on various things for the project. Let's not ask what Evan can do for us, let's ask what we can do for this project, shall we? :)

I also hope we can look at the positives instead of negatives of this project. Darksend itself is a revolutionary innovation. Lifting the limit of DS from 10 drk is a huge accomplishment. Having the Masternode system in place is another huge accomplishment. I'm sure Evan has been working overtime to get the MN payment to work properly. Flare has also been looking at how the MN owners can be rewarded with Proof of Service apart from miners. We are very lucky to have these dedicated, committed, competent, daring devs and volunteers on this project. Let's not lose sight and let the devs work to get this project to be where it's supposed to be.

As Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." If Edison had given up his hope, would we still have the light bulb? maybe, maybe not. Will anything happen if we don't keep trying? I think Evan and flare will tell us someday, "We have not failed. We've just found 10,000 ways that won't work!"
 
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